The CRU graph. Note that it is calibrated in tenths of a degree Celsius and that even that tiny amount of warming started long before the late 20th century. The horizontal line is totally arbitrary, just a visual trick. The whole graph would be a horizontal line if it were calibrated in whole degrees -- thus showing ZERO warming

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Green Global Warming Editorial Gets it Wrong

By Alan Caruba

It's rare to come across a newspaper editorial in which virtually every assertion is false, but is absurdly titled "Face Facts."

Since 1988 the movement behind the global warming fraud has labored long and hard to mislead the citizens of the world to believe what is surely the greatest "science" hoax ever perpetrated.

However, when the leak of emails between the handful of climate scientists who conjured up the deliberately misleading data the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) used hit the Internet, the November 2009 event was quickly dubbed "Climategate." In one exchange, they worried over the fact that, since the late 1990s, the Earth was demonstrably getting cooler.

It is hard to believe that any journalist could not know about Climategate or the subsequent failure of the IPCC's Copenhagen climate conference that even the President attended as the entire hoax came unraveled.

"The wildfires in Russia, the floods in Pakistan and the record heat this summer in New Jersey have one thing in common: They are exactly the kind of symptoms scientists predicted we'd experience as global warming occurs."

Only there is no global warming. The Earth has been in a decade-old cooling cycle.

Which scientists are being cited? What kind of scientists? The current IPCC Chairman, Rajendra Pachauri began his career in an Indian diesel-locomotive factory. The Wall Street Journal pointed out that, "As an academic, he staunchly defended his country's right to burn coal."

And what do isolated natural events that occur in a brief time span have to do with alleged climate trends that can only be measured in centuries? Did the editorial writer ever hear of the Medieval Warm Period or of the Little Ice Age that followed it? Both were spread over centuries, not a single summer.

"Glaciers that have been stable for centuries are now melting at an alarming rate." No, they're not. Indeed, many are melting less as the result of the current cooling cycle. The cooling is due to lower solar activity; the result of a significant reduction in solar storms that are commonly called sunspots. This is the stuff they teach in Meteorology 101.

"Hurricanes are becoming more severe as ocean temperatures rise." You mean like the Category 4 Hurricane named Earl that in a matter of two or three days became a Category 1 and then fizzled out as a tropical storm? The hurricane named Katrina was an anomaly, a category 5, and they don't occur that often. Consider the relatively tame hurricane seasons we've had since then.

"A rational person would look at this evidence and listen to the scientists who are warning of catastrophic impacts over the next few decades, such as coastal flooding and the collapse of rain-fed agriculture in many regions, especially Africa."

It's too bad the writer of this editorial didn't display enough rationality to even question what the unnamed "scientists" were saying; much in the same way Al Gore has been telling everyone the same thing only to be revealed as a charlatan seeking to enrich himself from hoped-for climate legislation. The Chicago Exchange that sells "carbon credits" is close to failure as this bogus "market" collapses from the revelation that there is no global warming.

Scientists constantly challenge one another's work. That is part of the scientific method. Journalists are supposed to exercise a healthy skepticism, but in the case of the scientists who did express skepticism, they were labeled "deniers" until the truth could no longer be hidden from the public.

"Republicans in Washington have killed any chance for climate change legislation, for now. Polls show that while most Americans believe climate change is occurring, most Republicans do not." So, apparently, the climate is determined by one's political affiliation. The polls show increasing doubt about global warming along with the trend that most Americans disapprove of the job President Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress have done.

"The Environmental Protection Agency under Lisa Jackson is preparing to impose regulations on carbon emissions, as the Clean Air Act requires."

Wrong again. The Clean Air Act does not include carbon dioxide, even though the Supreme Court mistakenly called it a "pollutant." Carbon dioxide does not need to be regulated because it plays no role whatever as regards the planet's climate and because it is a gas that is vital to all vegetation on Earth in the same fashion oxygen is vital to animal life. The editorial writer is a complete moron.

"As the world dawdles, this problem will grow worse, and the solution will have to be more drastic, more expensive and disruptive. For that, we will have climate-change skeptics to thank." This editorial reeks of the same eco-lunacy that could be found in the Unabomber's manifesto or the Internet declaration posted by the lunatic who took hostages in Maryland a week ago, threatening to kill them unless the Discovery channel gave him a show of his own.

The newspaper was completely within its rights to publish the repetition of the kind of alarmism contained in the editorial, but it also has an obligation to get its facts right.

It reminded me of a comment by my friend, Dr. Richard Lindzen. He is one of the world's most respected climatologists, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor of Atmospheric Science.

"Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century's developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age."

The journalist H.L. Mencken had it right, "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."

Late last year the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science published a paper by Burke et al which claimed that climate change resulting from greenhouse gas emissions was dramatically increasing civil wars in Africa, and this trend would continue in the near term.

"We were definitely surprised that the linkages between temperature and recent conflict were so strong," said Edward Miguel, professor of economics at UC Berkeley and faculty director of UC Berkeley's Center for Evaluation for Global Action. "But the result makes sense. The large majority of the poor in most African countries depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, and their crops are quite sensitive to small changes in temperature. So when temperatures rise, the livelihoods of many in Africa suffer greatly, and the disadvantaged become more likely to take up arms."

[T]he proposition by Burke et al. (1) that warming may be a directly causative factor in the risk of civil war in Sub-Saharan Africa seems unlikely. . . Our greatest concern with the analysis is the characterization of the link between warming and large-scale conflict (>1,000 battle deaths). The title of the paper, “Warming Increases the Risk of Civil War in Africa,” suggests causation, but the evidence presented is not substantive enough to warrant such a conclusion. Although warming may serve as a proxy for correlated variables such as decreased soil moisture and reduced agricultural production, identifying warming, or even agricultural production, as primary factors in civil war oversimplifies systems affected by many geopolitical and social factors.

Our paper does not argue that temperature is the only—or even the primary—determinant of civil war. Further work is needed to understand how climate affects civil war, and we note this clearly in our paper.

The simple fact is this: climate characteristics and variability are unrelated to short-term variations in civil war risk in Sub-Saharan Africa. The primary causes of civil war are political, not environmental, and although environmental conditions may change with future warming, general correlates of conflicts and wars are likely to prevail. . . The challenges imposed by future global warming are too daunting to let the debate on social effects and required countermeasures be sidetracked by atypical, nonrobust scientific findings and actors with vested interests.

Burke has reacted strongly against Buhaug, accusing him of having cherry-picked his datasets (Note: Figure 2 in Buhaug is pretty convincing to me.). While climate change may not be the cause of African civil wars, it does seem to be the cause of civil wars in academia.

Critical Pacific Ocean subset of UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) temperature data now to be examined by New Zealand High Court.

In what is believed to be the first case of its kind in the world, the newly formed New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust has taken legal action against the National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), a `Crown Research Institute' contracted by the NZ Government to be its sole adviser on scientific issues relating to climate change. Instead of using the New Zealand Met Service temperature record that shows no warming during the last century, NIWA has adopted an "adjusted" record of seven surface stations that shows a 1 deg. C rise, almost 50% above the global average for that period.

Because there are very few long term temperature records in the Pacific Ocean, the NIWA record bears heavily disproportionate weight in determining multi-decadal trends in global average temperatures used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. However, the basis for the NIWA temperature adjustments is unknown, the data and calculations that underlie the adjustment method lost, and the originator of the technique of adjustment summarily dismissed from his position at NIWA.

Read news release from ICSC affiliate, the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC), which has unsuccessfully sought access to the data and calculations behind the temperature adjustment since 2006.

Comment from Brown University (a private Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island):

The mainstream alarmist posturing on climate change by the likes of Al Gore, regardless of whether it meets the demands of scientific accuracy or not, is resetting political priorities and imposing billions of dollars in costs for governments the world over.

Sustained inquiry, debate and scrutiny around the dealings of those involved - from scientific practitioners to powerful policymakers - are not only inevitable, but are also absolute imperatives. The taxpayer, after all, funds most of the climate research and his life is vastly affected by the domestic and international policies that it shapes. In particular, emerging economies across the world grapple with the burden of international pressures to "green up" versus their own aspirations to fully industrialize.

In that regard, the sensational November 2009 revelation of deplorable practices by leading climate change scientists cannot have been some blind chase driven by ideology, but a significant and irreversible turn in one of the greatest geopolitical debates of all time. Notwithstanding the supposed exonerations of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) scientists in question, their behavior remains unscrupulous. Moreover, for those manning the frontiers of an issue with such enormous global implications, "hiding the temperature decline" and destroying emails with critical evidence strikes me as just outright unacceptable.

Through his column, ("Scientific Misconduct," September 1), David Sheffield '11 would have us believe that the furor that arose from clear evidence of manipulating empirical data was misplaced - because no "scientific malpractice" was found by reviews. In other words, he renders the legitimacy of any criticism to the sole discretion of those tasked to "inquire" by the status quo, or those with zero incentives for objectiveness in the issue. The implications of this approach cannot be any trickier: all we need to settle this controversy is peer review by institutions whose credentials for objectiveness in this matter are questionable.

It should be noted that the implicated universities themselves - Penn State and the University of East Anglia - as the respective employers of the scientists in question, funded two of the supposedly independent inquiries into the CRU. Finding the scientists guilty on any count would also discredit these institutions and their status as the backbone of what Gore would like us to think as the "overwhelming scientific consensus" on climate change.

Sheffield's focus on the underlying issue is quite generic in that he merely states the outcomes of the inquiries but not the accusations in question. But his judgment on "deniers" is a little more detailed and sharp. He tags the critics as "ideologically driven" and "anti-scientific" crowds who are out to achieve self-serving ends. But nothing, however, can be truer about the mainstream scientific consensus on climate change whose figured scientists were tainted in the scandal. No objective scientist but in fact one driven by ideology, can go to the same lengths that the CRU experts went in actively trying to manipulate highly consequential empirical data.

Apologists of the status quo scientists will point to the fact that the evidence (or the lack thereof) was acquired illegally by a hacker, the fact remains that the conventional climate change science is rooted in the highly secretive work of men who we now know have the capacity and sometimes, motive to tailor some of their findings to suit certain goals - or ideologies, if you wish.

That climate change has become a multibillion dollar industry is not a mystery, nor is the fact that millions of "green" dollars are lining the personal pockets of those with enough clout on environmental policy. From federal grants to windfalls from energy companies, many incentives have clouded this industry and left total objectiveness wallowing away from the top of priority lists.

Therefore, with the far-reaching implications of global environmental policies, it is mandatory to keep relentless scrutiny as an indispensable part of that matrix of interconnectedness.

To make those critical of the questionable practices of authoritative scientists appear repulsive by tagging them as "anti-scientific" borders on some sort of censorship. It is no wonder bigger climate change fundamentalists are quick to address anyone skeptical of their sensation-seeking rhetoric as a heretic, or in the words of Bill Nye, "almost unpatriotic".

By analyzing both in the same side of his article, Sheffield paints climate change "deniers" with the same brush as those guilty of scientific misconduct, like disgraced academics of Marc Hauser's sort. The only problem is that while Hauser's case presents a black-and-white scenario whose verdict was easily delivered, the whitewash of the CRU by supposedly independent inquiries is not so simplistic. It is a mere microcosm of the fundamental global debate around global warming that is both complex, and far from over.

The jury is definitely still out on the so-called Climategate, and I don't think it is time for us here at Brown to conclusively hit that gavel yet - especially at the lead of inquiries that may have well chosen convenience over objectiveness. The enormity of the stakes worldwide does not allow us that luxury.

"Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you're a thousand miles from the corn field" -- Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Focus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is almost exclusively on temperature, particularly on warming. That alone should condemn their work because different weather has different implications for different activities and in most cases temperature is of little concern.

They have the world in a panic for no reason and real issues are confused by their work

They have the world in a panic for no reason and real issues are confused by their work. For example, farmers and agribusiness need to know about temperature shifts, but a gradual change is of little concern and easily accommodated. IPCC claim temperature has increased 1øC in the last 100 years and that's beyond a natural increase. It did not result in any negative impacts; in fact productivity has increased dramatically.

Their future scenarios include more serious rates but every one to date has not matched even minimum increases. As IPCC member Kevin Trenberth, wrote Wed, 14 Oct 2009, "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." Now consider the changes in science, technology and society in those 100 years. Unless free enterprise is completely stifled by political ideologies, we can expect similar advances in the next 100 years. It will not be 'business as usual" as environmentalists assume.

Dramatic temperature changes, like the nearly 2øC drop in global temperature after Mt. Tambora erupted in 1815 are relatively short-lived and today would have far less impact. A possible example of a temperature change comparable to the IPCC predictions but a cooling was the 70-year decline from 1530 to 1600. Lines delineate areas of arable land lost. Notice that between 1300 and 1600 approximately half the land went out of production. With today's science and technology, especially genetic modification, adaptation is much easier.

From year to year the single critical factor for plant growth is precipitation. Ignoring this allowed Michael Mann to use temperature as the sole cause of tree growth manifest in growth rings. Precipitation patterns are much more important for the short and medium term. The IPCC forecast increased droughts with global warming, which is counterintuitive. Higher temperatures cause increased evaporation and higher atmospheric moisture with greater potential for precipitation. The 2007 Report said, "very likely precipitation increases in high latitudes and likely decreases in most subtropical land regions, continuing observed recent trends." This is based on the assumption greatest warming will occur in high latitudes, but it is also illogical. As is the assumption that current trends will continue. Temperature determines the air's capacity to hold water. Polar temperature increase would have to be orders of magnitude greater than at middle and low latitude. But there they predict, "Decreasing water availability and increasing drought in mid-latitudes and semi-arid low latitudes."

Droughts at these latitudes are cyclical not related to temperature, although the temperature can modify the intensity of the drought. They ignored this research because they are related to solar cycles.

Generally the IPCC avoids doing anything with water.

Generally the IPCC avoids doing anything with water. This is especially true in their work on the greenhouse effect. In Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis Section 2 is titled, Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radioactive Forcing.

Section 2.3 discusses Chemically and Radioactively Important Gases but the only place where water vapor is mentioned is in a section on Stratospheric Water Vapor. This is a hangover from the original mandate to focus only on manmade causes of change, which is confirmed by a separate reference in Section 2.5 titled Tropospheric Water Vapor from Anthropogenic Sources. They changed the mandate because its limitations were identified, but they cynically changed little in the Report. It's impossible to know how much water vapor is from human sources, if you don't know natural amounts.

It is generally agreed that water vapor is 95 percent of the greenhouse gases by volume. There is complete disagreement about the effectiveness in delaying heat escape to space. Part of the problem is water vapor acts in some of the same wavelengths as CO2. Another is water exists as gas, liquid, or solid and each has a different effect. The complete inability of computer climate models to replicate the effect of clouds reflects these problems. Ironically, the only time the IPCC acknowledge water vapor is in their attempt to overcome the saturation effect of CO2. Even if CO2 doubles there is an upper limit to temperature increase. They said temperature increase due to CO2 would increase evaporation and this would create a positive feedback causing temperatures to continue to increase. This is now proven incorrect and a negative feedback with increased cloud blocking sunlight as a result.

There is also the problem of the percentages of water vapor throughout the atmosphere. The IPCC incorrectly assumes CO2 is uniformly distributed. They don't even grapple with the fact that water vapor in the atmosphere varies from almost zero in the polar regions to 4 percent in the tropics and is constantly changing from hour to hour. Rates of evaporation vary with temperature, but also with wind speed.

Computer models are built on data and temperature records are completely inadequate, which is a basic reason why the models fail. Records of precipitation are even worse. Accurate measurements of rainfall are very difficult; it`s even worse for snow. Even with adequate instruments, the number of stations is inadequate. Consider this comment about Africa. "One obvious problem is a lack of data. Africa's network of 1152 weather watch stations, which provide real-time data and supply international climate archives, is just one-eighth the minimum density recommended by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Furthermore, the stations that do exist often fail to report." (4 Aug 2006 VOL 313 Science). It is little better for most of the world.

The IPCC is a scientific, economic and political failure

For most middle latitude agriculture (30ø to 65ø) there are three primary sources of precipitation. Winter snowfall, summer rainfall and condensation in spring and fall. Measurements of the first two are less than adequate and the third is ignored. One summer, forecasts for a poor harvest on the Canadian Prairies were confounded. The obvious, but overlooked, explanation was that as much as 2 inches of moisture from condensation occurred in the late summer. This was more effective than rainfall because it occurred at ground level at night so little went to evaporation, and was available to the plant with reduced heat stress and was very widespread.

The IPCC is a scientific, economic and political failure. Its political focus on CO2 diverts climate science from producing useful research to advance practical world knowledge and understanding of weather and climate. I am glad to rain on their parade: It must be eliminated.

Tony Blair's recent expressions of regret over his introduction of the Freedom of Information Act has been much chewed over in the news recently.

If I sense things correctly this is just one symptom of something rather bigger. If I discern things correctly, there are moves afoot to start reining back on the scope of the Act. I can't quite recall what prompted me to do so, but a few weeks back I sent an FoI request to the Justice Ministry, the Whitehall department responsible for the FoI Act. I asked what meetings ministers and officials had had concerning possible changes to the application of the Act in universities. The answer came back that they "didn't hold the information". On its own this would be nothing, although a firmer answer - "no such meetings" would have been more encouraging.

But then there was this a heartfelt piece on the subject of FoI from Professor Edward Acton:

[T]here are dilemmas. If data gathered by researchers is to be disclosable before they have completed work on it, issues of commercial and intellectual property become acute. Take the recent ruling by the Information Commissioner (made under the FOIA's twin, the Environmental Information Regulation) to force Queen's University Belfast to hand over painstakingly assembled Irish Tree Ring data. Are we to find that commercial companies (located anywhere in the world - our FOIA is wonderfully cosmopolitan) may secure the release of the unworked data of every UK university?

As an aside, I think Doug Keenan, the man who forced QUB's hand on this issue, might take issue with some of this. For example, the data is decades old and so can hardly count as "unworked". Also, according to Queens itself, it was stored on an electronic medium that is already virtually obsolete - floppy disks, suggesting that it was not actually being used. Readers of the Hockey Stick Illusion will recognise these issues and will know that the data should have been stored in a secure repository designed for the purpose, such as the International Tree Ring Database.

But to return to the original theme, there has now been another strong hint that the bureaucrats are on the move. Today's You and Yours programme on BBC Radio 4 discussed the question of Freedom of Information and featured someone from the University of Warwick declaring that he felt that universities should be exempt.

His reasoning for this involved a delicious misleading of the interviewer, Julian Worricker. He informed Worricker that Warwick receives 77% of its income "competively" and 23% direct from the state. This suggestion then led neatly into an insinuation that Warwick is 23% state funded (all those grants are competitive, right?), and since 23% is much less than some charities get from the state, universities should be exempt. Here, for those who are interested, is the relevant extract from the Warwick accounts:

Anyway, take a listen. The universities section starts at about 20 mins. Heather Brooke is featured later on, together with some minor discussion of climate.

No comments:

Background

Context for the minute average temperature change recorded: At any given time surface air temperatures around the world range over about 100°C. Even in the same place they can vary by nearly that much seasonally and as much as 30°C or more in a day. A minute rise in average temperature in that context is trivial if it is not meaningless altogether. Scientists are Warmists for the money it brings in, not because of the facts

This site is in favour of things that ARE good for the environment. That the usual Greenie causes are good for the environment is however disputed. Greenie policies can in fact be actively bad for the environment -- as with biofuels, for instance

This Blog by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.), writing from Brisbane, Australia.

I am the most complete atheist you can imagine. I don't believe in Karl Marx, Jesus Christ or global warming. And I also don't believe in the unhealthiness of salt, sugar and fat. How skeptical can you get? If sugar is bad we are all dead

And when it comes to "climate change", I know where the skeletons are buried

Warmists depend heavily on ice cores for their figures about the atmosphere of the past. But measuring the deep past through ice cores is a very shaky enterprise, which almost certainly takes insufficient account of compression effects. The apparently stable CO2 level of 280ppm during the Holocene could in fact be entirely an artifact of compression at the deeper levels of the ice cores. . Perhaps the gas content of an ice layer approaches a low asymptote under pressure. Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski's criticisms of the assumed reliability of ice core measurements are of course well known. And he studied them for over 30 years.

The world's first "Green" party was the Nazi party -- and Greenies are just as Fascist today in their endeavours to dictate to us all and in their attempts to suppress dissent from their claims.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Warmism is a powerful religion that aims to control most of our lives. It is nearly as powerful as the Catholic Church once was

Believing in global warming has become a sign of virtue. Strange in a skeptical era. There is clearly a need for faith

Climate change is the religion of people who think they're too smart for religion

Some advice from the Buddha that the Green/Left would do well to think about: "Three things cannot be long hidden: The Sun, The Moon and The Truth"

Leftists have faith that warming will come back some day. And they mock Christians for believing in the second coming of Christ! They obviously need religion

Global warming has in fact been a religious doctrine for over a century. Even Charles Taze Russell, the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, believed in it

A rosary for the church of global warming (Formerly the Catholic church): "Hail warming, full of grace, blessed art thou among climates and blessed is the fruit of thy womb panic"

Pope Francis is to the Catholic church what Obama is to America -- a mistake, a fool and a wrecker

Global warming is the predominant Leftist lie of the 21st century. No other lie is so influential. The runner up lie is: "Islam is a religion of peace". Both are rankly absurd.

"When it comes to alarmism, we’re all deniers; when it comes to climate change, none of us are" -- Dick Lindzen

The EPA does everything it can get away with to shaft America and Americans

Cromwell's famous plea: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken" was ignored by those to whom it was addressed -- to their great woe. Warmists too will not consider that they may be wrong ..... "Bowels" was a metaphor for compassion in those days

Inorganic Origin of Petroleum: "The theory of Inorganic Origin of Petroleum (synonyms: abiogenic, abiotic, abyssal, endogenous, juvenile, mineral, primordial) states that petroleum and natural gas was formed by non-biological processes deep in the Earth, crust and mantle. This contradicts the traditional view that the oil would be a "fossil fuel" produced by remnants of ancient organisms. Oil is a hydrocarbon mixture in which a major constituent is methane CH4 (a molecule composed of one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). Occurrence of methane is common in Earth's interior and in space. The inorganic theory contrasts with the ideas that posit exhaustion of oil (Peak Oil), which assumes that the oil would be formed from biological processes and thus would occur only in small quantities and sets, tending to exhaust. Some oil drilling now goes 7 miles down, miles below any fossil layers

As the Italian chemist Primo Levi reflected in Auschwitz, carbon is ‘the only element that can bind itself in long stable chains without a great expense of energy, and for life on Earth (the only one we know so far) precisely long chains are required. Therefore carbon is the key element of living substance.’ The chemistry of carbon (2) gives it a unique versatility, not just in the artificial world, but also, and above all, in the animal, vegetable and – speak it loud! – human kingdoms.

David Archibald: "The more carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere, the better life on Earth will be for human beings and all other living things."

WISDOM:

"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." --- Richard P. Feynman.
Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough - Michael Crichton

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

"The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it" -- H L Mencken

'Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action' -- Goethe

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” -- Voltaire

Lord Salisbury: "No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe soldiers, nothing is safe."

Calvin Coolidge said, "If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you." He could have been talking about Warmists.

Some advice from long ago for Warmists: "If ifs and ans were pots and pans,there'd be no room for tinkers". It's a nursery rhyme harking back to Middle English times when "an" could mean "if". Tinkers were semi-skilled itinerant workers who fixed holes and handles in pots and pans -- which were valuable household items for most of our history. Warmists are very big on "ifs", mays", "might" etc. But all sorts of things "may" happen, including global cooling

Bertrand Russell knew about consensus: "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613-1680)

"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate" -- William of Occam

Was Paracelsus a 16th century libertarian? His motto was: "Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest" which means "Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself." He was certainly a rebel in his rejection of authority and his reliance on observable facts and is as such one of the founders of modern medicine

"In science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an advance in knowledge; in religion it is condemned as heresy". (Bob Parks, Physics, U of Maryland). No prizes for guessing how global warming skepticism is normally responded to.

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." -- Thomas H. Huxley

Time was, people warning the world "Repent - the end is nigh!" were snickered at as fruitcakes. Now they own the media and run the schools.

"One of the sources of the Fascist movement is the desire to avoid a too-rational and too-comfortable world" -- George Orwell, 1943 in Can Socialists Be Happy?

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts -- Bertrand Russell

“Affordable energy in ample quantities is the lifeblood of the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development of the others.” -- John P. Holdren, Science Adviser to President Obama. Published in Science 9 February 2001

The closer science looks at the real world processes involved in climate regulation the more absurd the IPCC's computer driven fairy tale appears. Instead of blithely modeling climate based on hunches and suppositions, climate scientists would be better off abandoning their ivory towers and actually measuring what happens in the real world.' -- Doug L Hoffman

Something no Warmist could take on board: "Knuth once warned a correspondent, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Prof. Donald Knuth, whom some regard as the world's smartest man

"To be green is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective. They are the barbarians at the gate we have to stand against" -- Rich Kozlovich

“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.“ – Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

Leftists generally and Warmists in particular very commonly ascribe disagreement with their ideas to their opponent being "in the pay" of someone else, usually "Big Oil", without troubling themselves to provide any proof of that assertion. They are so certain that they are right that that seems to be the only reasonable explanation for opposition to them. They thus reveal themselves as the ultimate bigots -- people with fixed and rigid ideas.

ABOUT:

This is one of TWO skeptical blogs that I update daily. During my research career as a social scientist, I was appalled at how much writing in my field was scientifically lacking -- and I often said so in detail in the many academic journal articles I had published in that field. I eventually gave up social science research, however, because no data ever seemed to change the views of its practitioners. I hoped that such obtuseness was confined to the social scientists but now that I have shifted my attention to health related science and climate related science, I find the same impermeability to facts and logic. Hence this blog and my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog. I may add that I did not come to either health or environmental research entirely without credentials. I had several academic papers published in both fields during my social science research career

Update: After 8 years of confronting the frankly childish standard of reasoning that pervades the medical journals, I have given up. I have put the blog into hibernation. In extreme cases I may put up here some of the more egregious examples of medical "wisdom" that I encounter. Greenies and food freaks seem to be largely coterminous. My regular bacon & egg breakfasts would certainly offend both -- if only because of the resultant methane output

Since my academic background is in the social sciences, it is reasonable to ask what a social scientist is doing talking about global warming. My view is that my expertise is the most relevant of all. It seems clear to me from what you will see on this blog that belief in global warming is very poorly explained by history, chemistry, physics or statistics.

Warmism is prophecy, not science. Science cannot foretell the future. Science can make very accurate predictions based on known regularities in nature (e.g. predicting the orbits of the inner planets) but Warmism is the exact opposite of that. It predicts a DEPARTURE from the known regularities of nature. If we go by the regularities of nature, we are on the brink of an ice age.

And from a philosophy of science viewpoint, far from being "the science", Warmism is not even an attempt at a factual statement, let alone being science. It is not a meaningful statement about the world. Why? Because it is unfalsifiable -- making it a religious, not a scientific statement. To be a scientific statement, there would have to be some conceivable event that disproved it -- but there appears to be none. ANY event is hailed by Warmists as proving their contentions. Only if Warmists were able to specify some fact or event that would disprove their theory would it have any claim to being a scientific statement. So the explanation for Warmist beliefs has to be primarily a psychological and political one -- which makes it my field

And, after all, Al Gore's academic qualifications are in social science also -- albeit very pissant qualifications.

A "geriatric" revolt: The scientists who reject Warmism tend to be OLD! Your present blogger is one of those. There are tremendous pressures to conformity in academe and the generally Leftist orientation of academe tends to pressure everyone within it to agree to ideas that suit the Left. And Warmism is certainly one of those ideas. So old guys are the only ones who can AFFORD to declare the Warmists to be unclothed. They either have their careers well-established (with tenure) or have reached financial independence (retirement) and so can afford to call it like they see it. In general, seniors in society today are not remotely as helpful to younger people as they once were. But their opposition to the Warmist hysteria will one day show that seniors are not completely irrelevant after all. Experience does count (we have seen many such hysterias in the past and we have a broader base of knowledge to call on) and our independence is certainly an enormous strength. Some of us are already dead. (Reid Bryson and John Daly are particularly mourned) and some of us are very senior indeed (e.g. Bill Gray and Vince Gray) but the revolt we have fostered is ever growing so we have not labored in vain.

Jimmy Carter Classic Quote from 1977: "Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.

SOME POINTS TO PONDER:

Today’s environmental movement is the current manifestation of the totalitarian impulse. It is ironic that the same people who condemn the black or brown shirts of the pre WW2 period are blind to the current manifestation simply because the shirts are green.

Climate is just the sum of weather. So if you cannot forecast the weather a month in advance, you will not be able to forecast the climate 50 years in advance. And official meteorologists such as Britain's Met Office and Australia's BOM, are very poor forecasters of weather. The Met office has in fact given up on making seasonal forecasts because they have so often got such forecasts embarrassingly wrong. Their global-warming-powered "models" just did not deliver

Hearing a Government Funded Scientist say let me tell you the truth, is like hearing a Used Car Salesman saying let me tell you the truth.

A strange Green/Left conceit: They seem to think (e.g. here) that no-one should spend money opposing them and that conservative donors must not support the election campaigns of Congressmen they agree with

David Brower, founder Sierra Club: “Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license"

After three exceptionally cold winters in the Northern hemisphere, the Warmists are chanting: "Warming causes cold". Even if we give that a pass for logic, it still inspires the question: "Well, what are we worried about"? Cold is not going to melt the icecaps is it?"

It's a central (but unproven) assumption of the Warmist "models" that clouds cause warming. Odd that it seems to cool the temperature down when clouds appear overhead!

To make out that the essentially trivial warming of the last 150 years poses some sort of threat, Warmists postulate positive feedbacks that might cut in to make the warming accelerate in the near future. Amid their theories about feedbacks, however, they ignore the one feedback that is no theory: The reaction of plants to CO2. Plants gobble up CO2 and the more CO2 there is the more plants will flourish and hence gobble up yet more CO2. And the increasing crop yields of recent years show that plantlife is already flourishing more. The recent rise in CO2 will therefore soon be gobbled up and will no longer be around to bother anyone. Plants provide a huge NEGATIVE feedback in response to increases in atmospheric CO2

Every green plant around us is made out of carbon dioxide that the plant has grabbed out of the atmosphere. That the plant can get its carbon from such a trace gas is one of the miracles of life. It admittedly uses the huge power of the sun to accomplish such a vast filtrative task but the fact that a dumb plant can harness the power of the sun so effectively is also a wonder. We live on a rather improbable planet. If a science fiction writer elsewhere in the universe described a world like ours he might well be ridiculed for making up such an implausible tale.

Greenies are the sand in the gears of modern civilization -- and they intend to be.

The Greenie message is entirely emotional and devoid of all logic. They say that polar ice will melt and cause a big sea-level rise. Yet 91% of the world's glacial ice is in Antarctica, where the average temperature is around minus 40 degrees Celsius. The melting point of ice is zero degrees. So for the ice to melt on any scale the Antarctic temperature would need to rise by around 40 degrees, which NOBODY is predicting. The median Greenie prediction is about 4 degrees. So where is the huge sea level rise going to come from? Mars? And the North polar area is mostly sea ice and melting sea ice does not raise the sea level at all. Yet Warmists constantly hail any sign of Arctic melting. That the melting of floating ice does not raise the water level is known as Archimedes' principle. Archimedes demonstrated it around 2,500 years ago. That Warmists have not yet caught up with that must be just about the most inspissated ignorance imaginable. The whole Warmist scare defies the most basic physics. Yet at the opening of 2011 we find the following unashamed lying by James Hansen: "We will lose all the ice in the polar ice cap in a couple of decades". Sadly, what the Vulgate says in John 1:5 is still only very partially true: "Lux in tenebris lucet". There is still much darkness in the minds of men.

The repeated refusal of Warmist "scientists" to make their raw data available to critics is such a breach of scientific protocol that it amounts to a confession in itself. Note, for instance Phil Jones' Feb 21, 2005 response to Warwick Hughes' request for his raw climate data: "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" Looking for things that might be wrong with a given conclusion is of course central to science. But Warmism cannot survive such scrutiny. So even after "Climategate", the secrecy goes on.

Most Greenie causes are at best distractions from real environmental concerns (such as land degradation) and are more motivated by a hatred of people than by any care for the environment

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices. -- Prof. P. Stott

The modern environmental movement arose out of the wreckage of the New Left. They call themselves Green because they're too yellow to admit they're really Reds. So Lenin's birthday was chosen to be the date of Earth Day. Even a moderate politician like Al Gore has been clear as to what is needed. In "Earth in the Balance", he wrote that saving the planet would require a "wrenching transformation of society".

For centuries there was a scientific consensus which said that fire was explained by the release of an invisible element called phlogiston. That theory is universally ridiculed today. Global warming is the new phlogiston. Though, now that we know how deliberate the hoax has been, it might be more accurate to call global warming the New Piltdown Man. The Piltdown hoax took 40 years to unwind. I wonder....

Motives: Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Policies: The only underlying theme that makes sense of all Greenie policies is hatred of people. Hatred of other people has been a Greenie theme from way back. In a report titled "The First Global Revolution" (1991, p. 104) published by the "Club of Rome", a Greenie panic outfit, we find the following statement: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." See here for many more examples of prominent Greenies saying how much and how furiously they hate you.

After fighting a 70 year war to destroy red communism we face another life-or-death struggle in the 21st century against green communism.

The conventional wisdom of the day is often spectacularly wrong. The most popular and successful opera of all time is undoubtedly "Carmen" by Georges Bizet. Yet it was much criticized when first performed and the unfortunate Bizet died believing that it was a flop. Similarly, when the most iconic piece of 20th century music was first performed in 1913-- Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" -- half the audience walked out. Those of us who defy the conventional wisdom about climate are actually better off than that. Unlike Bizet and Stravinsky in 1913, we KNOW that we will eventually be vindicated -- because all that supports Warmism is a crumbling edifice of guesswork ("models").

Al Gore won a political prize for an alleged work of science. That rather speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Jim Hansen and his twin

Getting rich and famous through alarmism: Al Gore is well-known but note also James Hansen. He has for decades been a senior, presumably well-paid, employee at NASA. In 2001 he was the recipient of a $250,000 Heinz Award. In 2007 Time magazine designated him a Hero of the Environment. That same year he pocketed one-third of a $1 million Dan David Prize. In 2008, the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented him with its Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. In 2010 he landed a $100,000 Sophie Prize. He pulled in a total of $1.2 million in 2010. Not bad for a government bureaucrat.

See the original global Warmist in action here: "The icecaps are melting and all world is drowning to wash away the sin"

I am not a global warming skeptic nor am I a global warming denier. I am a global warming atheist. I don't believe one bit of it. That the earth's climate changes is undeniable. Only ignoramuses believe that climate stability is normal. But I see NO evidence to say that mankind has had anything to do with any of the changes observed -- and much evidence against that claim.

Seeing that we are all made of carbon, the time will come when people will look back on the carbon phobia of the early 21st century as too incredible to be believed

Meanwhile, however, let me venture a tentative prophecy. Prophecies are almost always wrong but here goes: Given the common hatred of carbon (Warmists) and salt (Food freaks) and given the fact that we are all made of carbon, salt, water and calcium (with a few additives), I am going to prophecy that at some time in the future a hatred of nitrogen will emerge. Why? Because most of the air that we breathe is nitrogen. We live at the bottom of a nitrogen sea. Logical to hate nitrogen? NO. But probable: Maybe. The Green/Left is mad enough. After all, nitrogen is a CHEMICAL -- and we can't have that!

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) must have foreseen Global Warmism. He said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

The Holy Grail for most scientists is not truth but research grants. And the global warming scare has produced a huge downpour of money for research. Any mystery why so many scientists claim some belief in global warming?

For many people, global warming seems to have taken the place of "The Jews" -- a convenient but false explanation for any disliked event. Prof. Brignell has some examples.

Global warming skeptics are real party-poopers. It's so wonderful to believe that you have a mission to save the world.

There is an "ascetic instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist instinct") in many people that causes them to delight in going without material comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were once full of such people -- with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most striking example. Many Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have that instinct too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious committments they have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them to live in an ascetic way. So their personal emotional needs lead them to press on us all a delusional belief that the planet needs "saving".

The claim that oil is a fossil fuel is another great myth and folly of the age. They are now finding oil at around seven MILES beneath the sea bed -- which is incomparably further down than any known fossil. The abiotic oil theory is not as yet well enough developed to generate useful predictions but that is also true of fossil fuel theory

Medieval Warm Period: Recent climatological data assembled from around the world using different proxies attest to the presence of both the MWP and the LIA in the following locations: the Sargasso Sea, West Africa, Kenya, Peru, Japan, Tasmania, South Africa, Idaho, Argentina, and California. These events were clearly world-wide and in most locations the peak temperatures during the MWP were higher than current temperatures.

Both radioactive and stable carbon isotopes show that the real atmospheric CO2 residence time (lifetime) is only about 5 years, and that the amount of fossil-fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is
maximum 4%.

Green/Left denial of the facts explained: "Rejection lies in this, that when the light came into the world men preferred darkness to light; preferred it, because their doings were evil. Anyone who acts shamefully hates the light, will not come into the light, for fear that his doings will be found out. Whereas the man whose life is true comes to the light" John 3:19-21 (Knox)

Against the long history of huge temperature variation in the earth's climate (ice ages etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise reported by the U.N. "experts" for the entire 20th century (a rise so small that you would not be able to detect such a difference personally without instruments) shows, if anything, that the 20th century was a time of exceptional temperature stability.

Recent NASA figures tell us that there was NO warming trend in the USA during the 20th century. If global warming is occurring, how come it forgot the USA?

Warmists say that the revised NASA figures do not matter because they cover only the USA -- and the rest of the world is warming nicely. But it is not. There has NEVER been any evidence that the Southern hemisphere is warming. See here. So the warming pattern sure is looking moth-eaten.

The latest scare is the possible effect of extra CO2 on the world’s oceans, because more CO2 lowers the pH of seawater. While it is claimed that this makes the water more acidic, this is misleading. Since seawater has a pH around 8.1, it will take an awful lot of CO2 it to even make the water neutral (pH=7), let alone acidic (pH less than 7).

In fact, ocean acidification is a scientific impossibility. Henry's Law mandates that warming oceans will outgas CO2 to the atmosphere (as the UN's own documents predict it will), making the oceans less acid. Also, more CO2 would increase calcification rates. No comprehensive, reliable measurement of worldwide oceanic acid/base balance has ever been carried out: therefore, there is no observational basis for the computer models' guess that acidification of 0.1 pH units has occurred in recent decades.

The chaos theory people have told us for years that the air movement from a single butterfly's wing in Brazil can cause an unforeseen change in our weather here. Now we are told that climate experts can "model" the input of zillions of such incalculable variables over periods of decades to accurately forecast global warming 50 years hence. Give us all a break!

Scientists have politics too -- sometimes extreme politics. Read this: "This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child." -- Albert Einstein

The Lockwood & Froehlich paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film. It is a rather confused paper -- acknowledging yet failing to account fully for the damping effect of the oceans, for instance -- but it is nonetheless valuable to climate atheists. The concession from a Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all but the last 20 years (See the first sentence of the paper) really is invaluable. And the basic fact presented in the paper -- that solar output has in general been on the downturn in recent years -- is also amusing to see. Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even have been the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly backwards. See my post of 7.14.07 and very detailed critiques here and here and here for more on the Lockwood paper and its weaknesses.

As the Greenies are now learning, even strong statistical correlations may disappear if a longer time series is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre’s yield of cotton. He calculated the correla­tion coefficient between the two series at –0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi­tions and lynchings in Raper’s data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal­ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic condi­tions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added." So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. In the Greenie case, the correlation between CO2 rise and global temperature rise stopped in 1998 -- but that could have been foreseen if measurements taken in the first half of the 20th century had been considered.

Greenie-approved sources of electricity (windmills and solar cells) require heavy government subsidies to be competitive with normal electricity generators so a Dutch word for Greenie power seems graphic to me: "subsidieslurpers" (subsidy gobblers)

Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

NOTE: The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here .....